Jan Marinus Wiersma (PSE). – (NL) Mr President, first may I wholeheartedly, on behalf of my Group, echo the appeal which Elmar Brok addressed to us all just now. It shows how important the neighbourhood policy is to the European Union’s external activities. We welcome the plans to strengthen the ENP, but this does not mean that the ENP is the finished article. The EU must keep looking for ways of making the policy more effective.

Differentiation – as others have said too – is the key to making the neighbourhood policy a success. The ENP applies to a huge area, from Morocco to Ukraine. Europe’s influence is not the same in all these countries, and Europe is not equally attractive to all of them. Within the context of the ENP, the EU must offer its partner countries the cooperation agreement that best meets its expectations. This is a given which we think should be reflected in the Commission’s priorities.

Georgia’s European aspirations are different from those of Azerbaijan. Tunisia is less important to the EU than Ukraine and Lebanon does not have the same weight as Morocco. Hence the need to consider each country individually.

We must concentrate on those countries where the ENP’s key objective of bringing neighbouring countries closer to Europe appears the most achievable.

The report also talks about the ENP countries’ eastern neighbours. We think it is a good idea, as part of the recently adopted Central Asia Strategy, to work for solid ties with the countries in question. In so doing, the European Union could certainly draw on experience from its neighbourhood policy.

We do not, however, endorse the idea of giving countries outside the region the status of ENP countries. We would do better to focus on a coherent approach to Central Asia rather than dragging certain countries into the ENP.

Lastly, stronger parliamentary cooperation with the ENP countries to the east is only useful if it is accompanied by multilateral cooperation by the region’s governments. If a parliamentary assembly were to be set up, there would also have to be a ministerial assembly, as in other regions where we have created parliamentary assemblies of this kind. In our view there could only be a parliament of this kind if the Council and Commission also created an intergovernmental counterpart.